thelingspace

[thelingspace]

Capturing Swedish Islands (Linguistically)

An interesting question found its way into our inbox recently, asking about relative clauses in Swedish, and wondering whether their unique characteristics might pose a problem for some of the linguistic theories we’ve talked about on our channel. So if you want a discussion of syntax, Swedish, and subjacency (with some eye-tracking thrown in), this is for you!

So yes, there is a hypothesis that Swedish relative clauses break one of the basic principles by which language is thought to work. In particular, it’s been claimed that one of the governing principles of language is Subjacency, which basically says that when words move around in a sentence, like when a statement gets turned into a question, those words can’t move around without limit. Instead, they have to hop around in small skips and jumps to get to their destination. To make this more concrete, consider the sentence in (1).

     (1) Where did Nick think Carol was from?

The idea goes that a sentence like this isn’t formed by moving the word “where” directly from the end to the beginning, as in (2). Instead, we suppose that it happens in steps, by moving it to the beginning of the embedded clause first, and then moving it all the way to the front of the sentence as a whole, shown in (3).

     (2a) Did Nick think Carol was from where?

     (2b) Where did Nick think Carol was from _?

     (3a) Did Nick think Carol was from where?

     (3b) Did Nick think where Carol was from _?

     (3c) Where did Nick think _ Carol was from _?

One of the advantages of supposing that this is how questions are formed is that it’s easy to explain why some questions just don’t work. The question in (4) sounds pretty weird — so weird that it’s hard to know what it’s even supposed to mean. (The asterisk marks it as unacceptable.)

     (4) *Where did Nick ask who was from _?

The explanation behind this is that the intermediate step that “where” normally would have made on its way to the front is rendered impossible because the “who” in the middle gets in its way. It’s sitting in exactly the spot inside the structure of the sentence that “where” would have used to make its pit stop.

More generally, Subjacency is used as an explanation for ‘islands,’ which are the parts of sentences where words like “where” and “when” often seem to get stranded. And one of the most robust kinds of island found across the world’s languages is the relative clause, which is why we can’t ever turn (5) into (6).

     (5) Nick is friends with a hero who lives on another planet

     (6) *Where is Nick friends with a hero who lives _?

Surprisingly, Swedish — alongside other mainland Scandinavian languages like Norwegian — seems to break this rule into pieces. The sentence in (7) doesn’t have a direct translation into English that sounds very natural.

    (7a) Såna blommor            såg    jag    en man som sålde på torget

    (7b) Those kinds of flowers    saw    I    a man that sold in square-the    (gloss)

    (7c) *Those kinds of flowers, I saw a man that sold in the square

So does that mean we have to toss all our progress out the window, and start from scratch? Well, let’s not be too hasty. For one, it’s worth noting that even the English version of the sentence can be ‘rescued’ using what’s called a resumptive pronoun, filling the gap left behind by the fronted noun phrase “those kinds of flowers.”

     (8) Those kinds of flowers, I saw a man that sold them in the square

For many speakers, the sentence in (8) actually sounds pretty good, as long as the pronoun “them” is available to plug the leak, so to speak. At the very least, these kinds of sentences do find their way into conversational speech a whole lot. So, whether a supposedly inviolable rule gets broken or not isn’t as black-and-white as it might appear. What’s maybe a more compelling line of thinking is that what look like violations of these rules on the surface can turn out not to be, once we dig a little deeper. For instance, the sentence in (9), found in Quebec French, might seem surprising. It looks like there’s a missing piece after “exploser” (“blow up”), inside of a relative clause, that corresponds directly to “l'édifice” (“the building”) — so, right where a gap shouldn’t be possible.

     (9a) V'là l'édifice qu'y a un gars qui a fait exploser _

     (9b) *This is the building that there is a man who blew up

But that embedded clause has some very strange properties that have given linguists reasons to think it’s something more exotic. For one, the sentence in (9) above only functions with what’s known as a stage-level predicate — so, a verb that describes an action that takes place over a relatively short period of time, like an explosion. This is in contrast to an individual-level predicate, which can apply over someone’s whole lifetime. When we replace one kind of predicate with another, what comes out as garbage in English now sounds equally terrible in French.

     (10a) *V’là l'édifice qu'y a un employé qui connaît _

     (10b) *This is the building that there is an employee who knows

Interestingly, stage-level predicates seem to fundamentally change the underlying structures of these sentences, so that other apparently inviolable rules completely break down. For instance, with a stage-level predicate, we can now fit a proper name in there, which is something that English (and many other languages) simply forbid.

     (11a) Y a Jean qui est venu

     (11b) *There is John who came    (cannot say out-of-the-blue to mean “John came”)

For this reason, along with some other unusual syntactic properties that come hand-in-hand, it’s supposed that these aren’t really relative clauses at all. And not being relative clauses, the “who” in (9) isn’t actually occupying a spot that any other words have to pass through on their way up the tree. That is, movement isn’t blocked like how it normally would be in a genuine relative clause.

Still, Swedish has famously resisted any good analysis. Some researchers have tried to explain the problem away by claiming that what look like relative clauses are actually small clauses — the “Carol a friend” part of the sentence below — since small clauses are happy to have words move out of them.

     (12a) Nick considers Carol a friend

     (12b) Who does Nick consider _ a friend?

But the structures that words can move out of in Swedish clearly have more in common with noun phrases containing relative clauses, than clauses in and of themselves. In (13), it just doesn’t make sense to think of the verb “träffat” (“meet”) as being followed by a clause, in the same way it did for “consider.”

     (13a) Det    har    jag    inte träffat    någon som gjort

     (13b) that    have    I    not met    someone that done

     (13c) *That, I haven’t met anyone who has done

So what’s next? Here, it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees. Languages show amazing variation, but given all the ways it could have been, language as a whole also shows incredible uniformity. It’s truly remarkable that almost all the languages we’ve studied carefully so far, regardless of how distant they are from each other in time and space, show similar island effects. Even if Swedish turns out to be a true exception after all is said and done, there’s such an overwhelming tendency in the opposite direction, it begs for some kind of explanation. If our theory is wrong, it means we need to build an even better one, not that we need no theory at all.

And yet the situation isn’t so dire. A recent eye tracking study — the first of its kind to address this specific question — suggests a more nuanced set of facts. Generally, when experimental subjects read through sentences, looking for open spots where a dislocated word might have come from as they process what they’re seeing, they spend relatively less time fixated on the parts of sentences that are syntactic islands, vs. those that aren’t. In other words, by default, readers in these experiments tend to ignore the possibility of finding gaps inside syntactic islands, since our linguistic knowledge rules that out. And in this study, it was found that sentences like the ones in (7) and (13), which seem to show that Swedish can move words out from inside a relative clause, tend to fall somewhere between full-on syntactic islands and structures that typically allow for movement, in terms of where readers look, and for how long. This suggests that Swedish relative clauses are what you might call ‘weak islands,’ letting you move words out of them in some circumstances, but not in others. And this is in line with the fact that not all kinds of constituents (in this case, “why”) can be moved out of these relative clauses, as the unacceptability of the sentence in (14) shows. (In English, the sentence cannot be used to ask why people were late.)

     (14a) *Varföri    känner    du    många som blev sena till festeni?

     (14b) Why        know        you    many who were late to party-the

     (14c) *Why do you know many people who were late to the party?

For reasons we don’t yet fully understand, relative clauses in Swedish don’t obviously pattern with relative clauses in English. At the same time, the variation between them isn’t so deep that we’re forced to throw out everything we know about how language works. The search for understanding is an ongoing process, and sometimes the challenges can seem impossible, but sooner or later we usually find a way to puzzle out the problem. And that can only ever serve to shed more light on what we already know!

[thelingspace]

What's in our minds when we throw an if/then sentence out there? How do we work out what worlds we may be talking about? In this week's episode, we talk about the semantics of conditionals: what an "if" looks like logically, why a simple logical arrow isn't enough to capture the complexities of conditionals, and how we change what possibilities we allow ourselves to think of based on what our "if" clause holds.

We’re happy to be back again, and we’re looking forward to hearing what people have to say!

[thelingspace]

Here's our collaboration with Origin of Everything and 12tone on the history of God Save the Queen and My Country Tis of Thee, what makes music sound anthemic, and what happens when you translate a song. Give it a look and check out their channels, too! ^_^

[thelingspace]

Two Updates!

We've got a big week this week for the Ling Space! Today, we've got a collaboration episode we did with the fantastic history channel The Origin of Everything and the fascinating music theory channel 12tone. It's on the history of God Save the Queen and My Country 'Tis of Thee and anthems; we talk about song translations and how they work. We're really excited to share it!

Then tomorrow, we'll be posting our new video on the semantics of conditionals. If you've been wanting to understand how we deal with what-ifs, then this is the video for you! Tomorrow afternoon - we're looking forward to it. ^_^

[thelingspace]

Reblog for the day crew! ^_^

What can silence tell us about the syntax of a sentence? How do we know what meaning to fill in when words are missing? In this week’s episode, we talk about ellipsis: what rules are at work to tell us how to use it, how sentence structure plays into what words we can leave out, and whether words are even missing at all, or just hiding.

We’re really glad to be back and sharing stuff with you all again! Looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

[thelingspace]

What can silence tell us about the syntax of a sentence? How do we know what meaning to fill in when words are missing? In this week's episode, we talk about ellipsis: what rules are at work to tell us how to use it, how sentence structure plays into what words we can leave out, and whether words are even missing at all, or just hiding.

We’re really glad to be back and sharing stuff with you all again! Looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

[thelingspace]

We've got a new episode coming up tomorrow to brighten up your December! We're going to be talking about the syntax of ellipsis: what we understand when we leave words out of sentences, and the rules underneath it. Very much looking forward to sharing it! ^_^

[thelingspace]

Our staff writer Stephan Hurtubise is going to be discussing linguistics with Jon Perry from Stated Clearly this Sunday at 1 PM Eastern Time! If you want to check out the discussion, it’s going to be over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkgFyL6eDJ8

[thelingspace]

LangFest Montreal

We’re looking forward to taking part in LangFest in Montreal this weekend! Moti is giving a talk at 2:45 on Friday on what exactly it is linguists do, with some fun demonstrations. Plus there are intro language workshops, and a lot of other exciting speakers, as well, including Jessica Coon, who we interviewed about her work on the film Arrival, Steve Kaufmann, and many more.

You can still get tickets at a big discount here, if you’re around and want to come give it a try! Hope to see you there. ^_^

[thelingspace]

Untranslatability and Sound Effects

I’ve been catching up on Lingthusiasm lately, the excellent linguistics podcast by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, and ran into their episode about untranslatability. You can go listen to the whole thing - it’s unsurprisingly pretty fun! But it made me also think of this article by Zach Davisson on translating sound effects from Japanese to English:

The greatest challenge you will face as a manga translator is the sound of silence. I mean that literally. When it comes to silence, Japanese has a specific sound effect for it. English doesn’t. When a Japanese character walks into a room and is encountered with “sheeeen,” readers know the room is deadly silent. When a Japanese comedian tells a joke and it falls flat, the comedian is confronted with the horrifying sound of “sheen”—the sound of silence.  English has no equivalent. It is untranslatable.

There are definitely onomatopoeia that do have translations (e.g. “wan wan” in Japanese going to “bow wow” or “woof” in English). But there are ones that don’t map easily, and yet are still very important to communicating within that visual space, as Davisson explains. You need to have sound effects, and leaving them as just the Japanese sounds transcribed into English doesn’t really work, because what seems totally natural to a Japanese speaker will mean nothing to an English speaker with no Japanese knowledge.

Well, maybe not nothing: there does appear to be some level of underlying meaning to particular sound profiles across cultures. But that doesn’t mean that the specifics of the intended meaning will get across for that particular situation. If you read the whole piece from Davisson, he discusses some strategies, but doesn’t bring up one that I like, even if it’s not actually sound effects, exactly: just writing out the action, as on this comic page from a work by our graphics team. It’s not like “nod” or “fiddle” works as a sound effect, exactly, but the font helps fill out the action in a way that works for me.

Anyway, onomatopoeia is a translation problem that doesn’t have a great solution, so you just have to pick something and be consistent about it. And how do you deal with the Japanese sound of silence? Davisson’s preferred solution is also mine:

...

[thelingspace]

VidCon 2018

Our director Adele is going to be representing us at VidCon 2018! Not only that, she’s going to be moderating a panel on EduTube Beyond the Sciences, looking at humanities education on YouTube. Other participants include John Green from Crash Course, Sarah Urist Green from the Art Assignment, Danielle Bainbridge from the Origin of Everything, Cory Arnold from 12tone, and Betty from Articulations. We’re really excited - it’s going to be a great panel!

If you happen to be attending VidCon, go check out the discussion, and say hi to Adele, too!

[thelingspace]

Here’s a very good video about the history of the word “gay”, from the channel The Origin of Everything. If you want to know more about how words change meaning over time, check out our video on semantic shift! And we’ve got some exciting stuff going on with Danielle Bainbridge, the channel’s host, but more on that tomorrow. ^_^

[thelingspace]

λ e . e is an event involving forgetting

Going back and doing some cleaning as we get ready to do new things, I realized I never posted our extended discussion on event semantics here! So if you want some good discussion of how we can best capture exactly what verbs are doing semantically, continue on here.

Back in our episode about event semantics, we argued that we’ve actually been thinking about verbs all wrong in terms of how we treated them semantically. Up until now, we’ve treated verbs as though they were kind of like naturally occurring versions of the predicate symbols you find in the artificial language of logic. So we could model the meaning of a verb like “travel” by taking advantage of this correspondence.

    (1)    “travel”    ≈    Txy

Those variable symbols “x” and “y” following the predicate capture the fact that a verb like “travel” tends to combine with both travelers and destinations, in order to produce complete sentences. Borrowing letters nearer to the beginning of the alphabet to stand in for specific people and places, replicating those completed sentences in logic is fairly straightforward.

    (2)    “Athan traveled to London”        ≈    Tal

After giving it some thought, though, we decided that a better way to think of the meaning of a verb like “travel,” along with other verbs, is not to treat it as a description of an individual, or even a relation between individuals and locations, but a property of events. Using this new logic, the meaning of “travel” would look more like “Te,” signifying that the act of traveling really refers to a set of coordinates in space and time — that is, an event. The verb “travel,” then, picks out any and all instances of traveling, in a way similar to how the noun “scientist” picks out, well, anyone who’s a scientist!

    (3)    “travel”    ≈    Te

In our updated system, the meaning of “Athan traveled to London” now looks like a different kind of logical statement — one that’s existentially quantified. That means it’s a statement saying there’s at least one event out there in the world that fits the bracketed description following the backwards “E.”

    (4)    “Athan traveled to London”        ≈    ∃e(Te ∧ Aea ∧ Del)

In particular, it says there exists an instance of traveling, and that the person doing the traveling — the agent — is Athan, and that the destination is London. As you can see, the job of introducing other information, either about who did it, or how it happened, falls to other constituents. (We left it open exactly how the events described by verbs become existentially quantified, but a good first guess is that it’s tense that does the job, alongside locating the event in time.)

In making this move, we’ve ended up changing the typical verb’s argument structure, which is something we’ve touched on before. It means that we’ve fiddled with the number and kinds of things that any given verb is built to combine with. A verb like “hallucinate,” on a conceptual level, doesn’t combine directly with its subject anymore; instead, it’s meant to combine with an event, with the subject coming in obliquely. In the language of the lambda calculus, which is especially useful for keeping track of what combines with what, the meaning of “hallucinate” shifts over from (5a) to (5b) —  from a function that accepts individuals as its input, to one that accepts events.

    (5a)    λ x . x hallucinated

    (5b)    λ e . e is an event involving hallucination

But it seems fair to ask whether this applies across the board: are all verbs created equal? Well, consider the following two sentences.

    (6a)    There’s a man drinking whiskey

    (6b)    *There’s a man liking whiskey

While the first sounds perfectly natural, the second seems off. And intuitively, the most noticeable difference we might point to between these verbs is that the first describes something done over a shorter period, while the second applies to an individual over a longer stretch, maybe even a lifetime. A bit more technically, linguists have attributed the split behaviours of these words to the fact that “drink” is a stage-level predicate, while “like” is an individual-level predicate.

Digging even deeper, it’s been recognized that more punctuated events (e.g., arriving, noticing, exploding) form only a small part of a much larger category of eventualities, which isn’t just some undifferentiated mass, but also includes things like lengthier processes (e.g., speaking, walking, sleeping) and even longer-term states (e.g., knowing, owning, loving).

The underlying difference, then, between stage-level verbs like “drink” and individual-level verbs like “like” might simply be that they apply to different kinds of eventualities (i.e., processes vs. states). It’s even been suggested that individual-level words dispense with event-based logic entirely, and work more like the predicates found in classical logic. This would actually go a long way in explaining why expressions of time and space, which we supposed place restrictions on events, don’t go well with every verb.

    (7a)    Katarina often speaks German

    (7b)    *Katarina often knows German

    (8a)    Ted is being held captive in the facility

    (8b)    *Ted resembles his father in the facility

It could also explain why perception verbs like “see” and “hear” and “smell,” which seem to be looking to combine with something fairly ‘eventive’ in nature, get along with some verbs much better than others.

    (9a)    Cassandra saw James talk to himself

    (9b)    *Cassandra saw James love her

So the innovation of event semantics not only gives us a way of explaining exactly how adverbs and prepositional phrases fold into sentences, as we spelled out in the episode — it can also account for the fact that verbs regularly contrast with each other regarding the sorts of sentences we find them in to begin with. And having only really scratched the surface, you can be sure we’ll have a lot more to say about this topic in episodes to come!

[thelingspace]

We’re getting ready to start posting again - we’ve got some interesting stuff we’re looking forward to sharing, interviews and regular videos!

In the meantime, I wanted to share this video from the channel Freedom in Thought, on 1984 and linguistic determinism, the hypothesis that language determines what you can think. It’s a pretty cool look at the topic and gets into some of the science behind it! If you want more discussion on linguistic determinism, take a look at our video, too - it covers some of the same information, but also some of the other research that’s been done, as well!

[thelingspace]

Probably my new go-to audio illusion to show people! I particularly liked Dr. Turnbull’s explanation, linked to above. If you haven’t heard this already, give it a try!

It’s The Dress but for linguistics (from Cloe Feldman‏ on twitter). 

A couple explanations of what might be going on. From The Verge:  

The secret is frequency. The acoustic information that makes us hear Yanny is higher frequency than the acoustic information that makes us hear Laurel. Some of the variation may be due to the audio system playing the sound, Reicke says. But some of it is also the mechanics of your ears, and what you’re expecting to hear.

Older adults tend to start losing their hearing at the higher frequency ranges, which could explain why Riecke could only hear Laurel, but his eight-year-old daughter could hear Yanny. It’s a phenomenon you can mimic on a computer, he says: if you remove all the low frequencies, you hear Yanny. If you remove the high frequencies, you hear Laurel.

From Rory Turnbull on twitter: 

Here’s what I think is going on. In the first syllable, there’s only one major spectral peak below 2.5kHz. It has a wide bandwidth, which is consistent with an F1 and F2 very close together: an /ɑ/ (for “Laurel”). 

The higher spectral prominence dips down about halfway through the word, between the two syllables. If the lower spectral prominence is F1 & F2, then the higher one must be F3. A low F3 = /ɹ/! 

But what if we treat that higher spectral prominence as an F2, rather  than an F3? Then we have a very high F2 in the first syllable, consistent with a front vowel or approximant, e.g. /j/. The F2 stays  pretty high and the F1 gradually rises, giving a percept of /jæ/

The fall of the F2 between the two syllables is then consistent with an /n/, although we don’t see the general amplitude dampening that we normally associate with nasals. The F2 rises and F1 falls again at the end, resulting in /jæni/ overall.

An earlier example of the Yanny/Laurel phenomenon: BILL BILL BALE BALE PALE PAIL MAYO

[thelingspace]

A cool discussion of A Quiet Place from our staff writer Stephan! There’s some good explanation under the fold, too, but it is spoiler-y. Still, I learned a bunch!

Quiet Linguistics

It’s not often that a horror movie manages to snag the top spot at the box office, and even rarer that it should reclaim first place in its third weekend, after having dropped down to number two. But that’s exactly what John Krasinki’s new film A Quiet Place pulled off, to the tune of a 50 million dollar opening, and over 200 million worldwide. What’s more remarkable, though, is that such a mainstream movie would commit so steadfastly to its premise — where any sound made can attract the attention of deadly monsters — and silently render almost every word of dialogue in American Sign Language (ASL). And as a result, actress Millicent Simmonds explains, the film winds up being especially significant for the deaf community.

Simmonds, who is deaf herself, actually spent time on set helping the other actors learn ASL, which generally goes underrepresented in mainstream cinema. And the importance of casting a deaf actor and using genuine sign language is something she’s been quick to underscore. “I think it’s important in the deaf community to advocate for and be a representative for this story,” she says, “a story that might inspire directors and other screenwriters to include more deaf talent and be more creative in the way you use deaf talent.” “What I hope is that I can show [my community] you can do anything,“ she goes on to explain, “not only become an actor, but a writer, a teacher, a pilot, anything you want to do is possible.”

And for those who’ve now seen the film, there’s yet another linguisticky easter egg to be found, around which the whole final act of the movie turns. So if you don’t want to be spoiled, be sure to stop reading right now, because principle plot points abound below the fold! ^_^

Keep reading

[thelingspace]

Pronouns and leaving things out

In our recent video about pronouns, we discussed how we figure out just what they mean, since on its own, “he” or “himself” doesn’t seem to mean anything. At first glance, it looks as if reflexive pronouns like “himself” always have to refer back to some other nearby noun phrase — their antecedent. More precisely, reflexive pronouns and their antecedents co-refer, which means they both pick out the same thing in the world.

     (1) Mark believes in himself.

But as we pointed out in this episode, that idea doesn’t really hold up when it comes to quantifying phrases, like “everybody” or “no soldier.” In the sentence below, the subject doesn’t really point to anything, but the pronoun still meaningfully connects up to it.

     (2) None of Mark’s brothers understand themselves as well as he does.

A more complete picture of reflexives, then, is one where they’re always bound to some nearby noun phrase, whether it’s a name, a quantifying expression, or even another pronoun. They don’t necessarily have to refer to anything, but that connection always has to be there. In other words, they have to be co-indexed with their antecedent, even if they don’t have that reference link.

In contrast to reflexives, regular pronouns like “her” and “he” don’t always need to be bound to something nearby, or even something far away. They can either skip over intervening noun phrases to connect up to a distant subject, as in (3), or else refer to that same person by way of the speaker physically pointing them out, like in (4).

     (3) Delphine is worried about whether or not Cosima will forgive her.

     (4) She’s worried about Cosima.

Of course, interpreting some sentences requires that ordinary pronouns act a lot like reflexives; assuming “they” in the sentence below is understood to be picking out a portion of Sarah’s sisters, we’re forced to suppose that it’s co-indexed with — and so bound to — the quantified phrase “most of Sarah’s sisters.”

     (5) Most of Sarah’s sisters don’t even know they’re related.

The point is just that non-reflexive pronouns have a degree of freedom that reflexive pronouns don’t, and can maneuver in ways reflexives can’t. But this ends up raising an interesting question about certain kinds of sentences, like the one found in (6).

     (6) Alison knew she was in trouble.

In principle, the sentence above has two separate paths to arrive at the interpretation where “she” refers to Alison: either “she” is co-indexed with the noun phrase “Alison,” or else “she” is open to picking out whoever is poking out the most in the conversation at that point in time, which by coincidence happens to be Alison. That is, “she” is either bound to the subject, and so indirectly referencing Alison, or else freely referring to the person named Alison directly, by way of the surrounding context.

That might seem like a distinction without a difference, and in this case it very nearly is, since there’s no detectable change in meaning (i.e., in either case, “she” winds up referring to Alison). We might even wonder whether it’s necessary to ever suppose that regular pronouns are bound, save when following quantifying words. Maybe, in all other cases, non-reflexive pronouns are simply free, choosing sometimes to co-refer with some other part of the sentence, and sometimes not to. After all, it seems a bit redundant to have two equally valid ways of arriving at the exact same result.

But as it turns out, there’s actually something we can do to tease these subtly separate meanings apart from each other, despite how closely tied together they might appear. To see how, consider the sentence in (7).

     (7) Rachel went into hiding, because she had to.

Notice that the second clause is fairly easily understood to mean “because she had to go into hiding,” even though the verb phrase is nowhere to be seen. That’s because this represents an instance of ellipsis — the omission of part of a sentence when it’s clear what’s being cut out. In particular, when we encounter ellipsis, we always understand the missing material to be identical to some nearby, suitably related string of words. After all, the second half of (7) can’t mean “because she had to stay safe,” as much as that might make sense. This identity condition on ellipsis helps us to quickly recover what’s left unsaid.

And though it might at first come across as counterintuitive, ellipsis is a surprisingly powerful way to get at a better understanding of the behaviour of pronouns. In fact, by making them disappear, we can actually end up clarifying how they work! Take a close look at this next sentence.

     (8) Dr. Leekie went to his office, and Dr. Nealon did too.

Beginning with the assumption that “his” refers to Dr. Leekie, and not some third party that hasn’t been mentioned, the first half of the sentence is understood to mean “Dr. Leekie went to Dr. Leekie’s office.” Now, if we had arrived at this meaning by having the possessive pronoun “his” freely pick out Dr. Leekie, simply because it was convenient, we’d expect the missing part of second half of the sentence to match this choice word-for-word. That is, we’d expect the whole sentence to mean “Dr. Leekie went to Dr. Leekie’s office, and Dr. Nealon went to Dr. Leekie’s office.”

But that isn’t the only meaning we get. The sentence can also mean “Dr. Leekie went to Dr. Leekie’s office, and Dr. Nealon went to Dr. Nealon’s office.” The whole thing is ambiguous, because the missing material can be interpreted in two different ways. And if we assume that the absent verb phrase must be identical with the one in the first half of the sentence, as we did in (7), that initial VP must be capable of carrying two slightly different interpretations: one where “x went to Dr. Leekie’s office,” and one where “x went to x’s own office.” So, the pronoun “his” can either act like a ‘true’ non-reflexive pronoun, and directly pick out Dr. Leekie, or it can act more like a reflexive pronoun, binding it to the nearest available subject.

The fact that the second clause (and so the sentence as a whole) has two detectable meanings lets us peer into the inner workings of that first clause. It tells us that the first half of the sentence has two subtly distinct interpretations, and that two unique mechanisms are at play, all because pronouns have the option of being either bound or free.

So a completely natural phenomenon like ellipsis can be co-opted and used as a tool, to help shed light onto the otherwise sticky semantics of pronouns, and provide us with even more evidence that reflexives and non-reflexives both fit into the same basic category — with a few differences, for sure, but also more in common than you might have thought.